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Speedlink Friday 1: Manifesto, Placebo, Microhoo, and Expelled

speedlink-friday.jpgThis is going to be fun. I’ve never done the speedlinking thing on a regular basis, but it seems to be a popular feature on a lot of blogs these days, so I’m perfectly willing to join the fray and give you the lowdown on what’s caught my eye lately around the blogosphere and beyond. This first installment will be a little more verbose than future ones as I have a lot of stuff to say this time around!

And that’s it for this Friday. Have a great weekend…see you on Monday!

God is the Ultimate Travel Agent 5: Prophecy

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress.

God is the Ultimate Travel AgentWelcome to the fifth installment of God is the Ultimate Travel Agent! We’ve learned a lot in this series already, such as what it means to devote yourself to following the path that God has for your life, comprehending the wonderful “good news” of Immanuel…that God is with us everywhere we go, and humbling yourself to receive direction and insight from the Holy Spirit. It isn’t enough to be moving fast in one direction, because if that direction is leading you towards destruction, it’s better to stand still and wait on the Lord to hear where your real destination lies. Last time we discussed how to position yourself to receive revelation from God; now we will delve further into the ways that God speaks to us and imparts knowledge into our souls.

Given to You by Prophecy

Possibly the most dramatic way God can give you direction and meaning in life is via the prophetic gift in others. When godly people under the anointing of the Holy Spirit speak words of knowledge (divine awareness of current or past truths) and prophecy (divine foretelling of future truths) into you, the course of your life may be forever altered.

In the verses cited above, Paul instructs his young protégé, Timothy, to remain steadfast in his calling to be a teacher of the Word and to instruct his fellow believers in the faith. What I find fascinating is that Timothy’s gift was not something he just happened to have when he received Christ but was given to him by the laying on of hands by the church elders. Paul also mentions the prophecies for Timothy earlier in chapter 1 verse 18, and the laying on of hands in 2 Timothy 1:6. The elders, including Paul, saw in Timothy the ultimate person that God had created him to be, and Timothy very likely had little awareness of this spiritual reality. A wise man once said that the spiritual reality is always superior to the physical reality, and that’s essentially what prophecy is all about — taking that which is true in the Spirit and declaring it forth into the world around us.

I encourage you wholeheartedly to seek out sincere Christians who believe in the gift of prophecy and words of knowledge and allow them to lay hands on you and speak into your life. The blessing you will receive from hearing those words spoken over you is incalculable. Many facets of my life at the present time only came to pass because of a prior prophetic word. I can honestly say I would still be floundering around trying to figure out what to do without that inspired direction that flowed from the throne room of God.

Dreams

Another huge, though tricky, area of revelation is in dreams. Dreams are funny things. We dream by day and we dream by night. Our daydreams reflect the missing aspects of our lives that we long to acquire, and our dreams in the night reflect our most intimate fears or aspirations. The key is discerning where in the midst of dreaming God is. Because God most assuredly is there.

A few years back, my mom bought a book that talked about the ways God speaks to us through dreams when we are asleep. I’ll be honest with you: I thought it was a load of horse manure. Yeah, a few people in the Bible heard from God via dreams (sometimes via angels in dreams), but come on. Give me a break.

Then I had what I can only describe as a God dream. I woke up with a conviction in my spirit like nothing I’d ever felt before that this dream was holy and was from God. I then proceeded to have a series of dreams, dozens of dreams, over the course of only a few months that were all filled with spiritual insight and direction. I have yet to experience such a season of revelation as I did at that time.

If you are interested in placing your sleep and your dreaming under the authority of the Holy Spirit, here’s what you can do. Ask God to give you revelation in your dreams. Don’t be discouraged if you still have the usual wacky or bizarre dreams for a while that we all have. Keep asking Him to touch you, and sooner or later I believe you’ll wake up from something profound — possibly even Biblical or ministerial in nature — with a feeling that God wants to tell you something. Write down the dream immediately, even if the clock reads 3:17 AM, and then go back to sleep. In the morning, you can pray and ask God to give you an interpretation of what the dream meant. Sometimes it’s good to go to someone else with a gift of dream interpretation via the Holy Spirit and see what they perceive. In my case, I usually find that there is a knowing in my spirit of what the dream meant literally the moment I wake up from it — that’s often how I know the dream was from the Lord.

Day-to-Day Walk

This is probably a post all its own, so I’ll try to keep it short, but one of my favorite ways to hear from God is just talk to Him. Talk talk talk. Don’t ever give up. Ask Jesus to show you a picture of Himself in your mind, and then just focus on Him and talk. Tell Him what you love, what you hate, why you’re happy, why you’re sad, why you’re lonely, why you’re enthused. Talk about the weather. Talk about your health. Talk about your job. Talk talk talk talk talk. You see, we as Christians have been beaten down into thinking that God only communicates to us through Scripture, and therefore all we can do is pray in some kind of pseudo-spiritual manner and then try to read the Bible to get an answer. Oh, of course that will work. But it’s not the only way. You can also just talk. When you talk, listen. Don’t just speak words, but pause and wait for an answer. Sometimes the answer comes as words (and don’t be surprised if you don’t hear some huge gigantic voice like in the “Ten Commandments” movie), sometimes as just a “knowing” in your spirit, sometimes as images or impressions, sometimes even as music or a song. Other people get strange sensations in their body. I often just get a feeling of overwhelming peace and serenity.

How do you know you’re hearing from God, and not just demons or your own head? Ah, the big question. My only reply is that the more you submit yourself to the Spirit of God and stay steadfast in His Word (that’s why it is very important to know Scripture!), the more you will know the peace and comfort of His Spirit that accompanies any revelation He gives you. Remember, if you ever receive anything that contradicts Scripture, you will know it is false. Remember the famous “love” chapter of 1 Corinthians 13? Read that. God is Love, therefore, what you receive from the Holy Spirit always rides on the back of love. So if you receive revelation that denies who God is, who His people are (the Church), requires you to hurt or deceive your fellow man in any way, or that gratifies your flesh or ego regardless of the welfare of others, then it is not of God.

Stay true to the faith, and weigh every prophecy carefully. There have been many abuses in the Church over the last several decades due to the egregious misuse of the prophetic gift, so use discernment, wisdom, and sound judgement as you seek the Lord for revelation. Some people snub prophecy because of abuse, but that’s like outlawing cars because they can run over people and kill them. Cars are simply vehicles that carry things to their destinations. It’s how they get there that counts. Prophecy is simply a vehicle that carries a supernatural word. It’s what we do with the prophecies we receive that counts.

Conclusion

We have more access to divine insight and counsel than most Christians are willing to admit. Let’s not shirk our responsibilities out of fear or religious traditions. Remember, God is speaking to us, all the time. Maybe if we had the courage and the humility to listen to what He has to say, we would discover the incredible, miraculous, and awesome destinies that He has for our lives and for the worldwide Christian Church.

Next week’s installment will be the last one in this series, and I want to focus squarely on how to put all we’ve learned into practice. You may want God to hold reign over your life, you may be willing to let Him lead you on a grand new adventure, you may be seeking Him for spiritual revelation, but how do you take all that and translate it into concrete change in your life? Good question. Let’s find the answer together!

Emerging as God’s Children 1: The Cry

Emerging as God's ChildrenWelcome to the first installment of Emerging as God’s Children! This is the beginning of an ongoing series that will last for the foreseeable future. Every Tuesday, I will post a short essay that attempts to express my desire to see Christians (myself included) come into the full knowledge and realization of the truth. What truth, you may ask? That we are the sons and daughters of the Most High God and that we can ask of the Father anything and it shall be done. We carry immense authority with us everywhere we go, authority that can change the world, destroy the works of our enemy the devil, and usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. So why don’t we see the full manifestation of this in our daily lives? Because we are often ignorant of such a profound spiritual reality. Our eyes are closed, our minds are shut, and we have no idea that we wield such mighty power. The Holy Spirit is like a vast ocean, shimmering in the glorious Light, and all we’ve done is taste a few drops of this living water and then scurry back to our dank, dark hole in the ground. Why are we hiding? Why are we so afraid? Why don’t we step out into the Light and live the way God intended? That’s what I’d like to explore in the days ahead.

I was inspired to start this series after reading Ché Ahn’s recent column in the May 2008 issue of Charisma Magazine. He describes how the Church has gone through waves of revelation and revival over the centuries, but that we’re only just beginning to understand what it means to be not just servants of God, not just friends of God, but actual children of God…co-heirs with Jesus Christ of a divine and perfect inheritance, destined to reign as a holy priesthood in God’s glorious kingdom. Ché Ahn isn’t the only one talking about this, of course, but his article got me thinking. This revelation is so deep, so profound, that we’ve completely missed it as a whole for thousands of years. Even now, we still have a hard time grasping the significance of it. What does it mean to be a son or a daughter of God? What does it mean to carry divine authority over sin, decay, and all manner of evil? What does it mean to walk in love, light, purity, and holiness as partakers of the divine nature? How does the theological become the physical — in other words, how can I translate what I feel in my spirit and know in my head into the way I live in the workplace, the home, school, and everywhere else I will spend my days while on the earth?

I discovered something several years ago. It’s very, very hard to resist temptation and live a holy life. Quite frankly, it’s downright impossible. But at the same time, it is possible, because I found that the more I focused on the person of Jesus and my love for Him, the more everything else just seemed to fall into its proper place. The more I gave my heart to God and submitted to His will and authority, the easier it became to do what was right and refrain from doing what was wrong. It is my firm belief that if I were 100% dedicated to God, I would be 0% dedicated to sin. Any sin in my life, any failing, any pride, any distress, is because that area of my life is not under the lordship of Jesus Christ. When I walk with Jesus, I walk in peace.

I titled the first installment of this series “The Cry” because I believe that within every man and woman is a deep yearning for God. We cry out to Him, all the time, but often we aren’t aware of it at our conscious level because we bury it down, way down, and we try hard to ignore it. We get busy, oh so busy, and we forget that we are crying out in desperation. We forget why we’re here. We forget who we were born to be, who we were made to be. We forget that life isn’t about experiencing the things around us we like, it’s about experiencing the One Who has loved us from before the foundation of the world and Who created us for a divine purpose. If we could but stop and remember that our heart’s cry is to love Him back, everything would change. Everything.

I hope you enjoy this new series. See you next week!

Jared

Monday Light: Looking Westward from Angel Island

Looking Westward from Angel Island

Angel Island is located in the San Francisco Bay just northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge. From its peak at Mt. Livermore you can see a 360 degree panorama of the Bay Area. This is but one of many lovely sights we saw on our trek this past Saturday to Angel Island.

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New and more frequent blogging schedule!

As some of you astute readers may have noticed already, I changed the links at the top around a little and added a favicon to the site. That’s only a tiny update compared to what’s coming next week, and I’m very excited to share with you what I’m planning.

The Monday Light weekly photo series has been a great success, both in terms of being a creative challenge as well as requiring a higher degree of blogging professionalism as I have to post something interesting every single week on the same day no matter what’s going on in my life. The downside that I’ve discovered however is that as my time for blogging has been so limited, I’ve tended to put off writing any actual posts since I think “oh, the blog’s sort of up to date, I got that photo up on there a couple of days ago.” Well that’s just silly. I’m sure most of you became readers of this blog due to my spiritual and philosophical writings, so photography, while fun, can’t take the place of that. And I’m also feeling frustrated myself that I’ve run out of steam on the writing angle.

I’ve been praying about this, and I feel like with the Lord’s leading I’ve got a great solution in the works, so without further adieu, here it is: everything I post henceforth will be part of a weekly blogging schedule that I will never, EVER deviate from. Well, almost never. The idea is that, just as I’ve committed to posting one new photo a week on Mondays, I will commit to posting one new entry on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Here is the final rundown of what I’ll be doing each and every week starting next week:

Monday: Monday Light — Photo series. You already know what this is.
Tuesday: Emerging as God’s Children — New series! Each week I will share a short thought or scripture about our relationship with God and the authority we have in Christ as fellow sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to His Kingdom. I was inspired by a column written by Ché Ahn of Harvest Rock Church on this very topic, and it’s exciting to me that I’ll be delving into this regularly for the foreseeable future.
Thursday: (rotating series or one-off posts) — I’ll use this day to post either the continuation of an ongoing monthly (ish) series on a particular topic, or I’ll post a one-off essay of some kind. Next week, for example, I will be posting the next installment of my series God is the Ultimate Travel Agent.
Friday: Speedlink Friday! — A whirlwind tour of the blogosphere courtesy of yours truly. By popular demand!

So there you have it. A new blogging schedule that I’m absolutely certain will infuse new life into the blog and give me a solid path forward as a new era of Finite Calls Infinite begins. I hope you enjoy the festivities! And as always, I welcome your feedback wholeheartedly!

Monday Light: Integrity is Wholeness

Integrity is Wholeness

Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
        of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
        or drown in despair when his days darken.

– Robinson Jeffers (extract from The Answer)

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Bitter on Twitter

I resisted getting a MySpace page a few years back when it exploded in popularity, because I failed to see how ugly public pages full of crap most people couldn’t care less about would enhance my social life online. Facebook was a much easier sell for me because I could get the best of social networking features wrapped in a package that actually looks good, protects my privacy, and gives me easy tools to keep track of my close aquaintances.

Twitter also exploded in popularity in recent times, and I resisted getting an account there because I failed to see why anyone would be interested in the fact that I ate a coffee yogurt and cranberry juice for breakfast this morning. Plus relying on a single server to manage nothing more than a stream of tiny messages seemed completely stupid. (Yes, I know I use Pownce for the same purpose, but it’s mainly just a way to stick a little thought-of-the-day feed onto my own blog). It’s like if everyone’s e-mail was all just off of a single server, like Gmail…oh, wait…

I hate to say “I told you so”, but when I read this erudite post on TechCrunch, it was like a breath of fresh air. If microblogging is truly a new part of basic Internet infrastructure like e-mail or IM, which I suppose it is at this point, then we need to introduce some standards and some reliable way to use the same technology with multiple service providers. Twitter may remain the top microblogging platform by virtue of its current reach and its brand, but the walled garden mentality can’t last much longer. The medium is too important to allow it to remain in the hands of only one provider, any more than there’s only one blog provider or one IM provider or one e-mail provider or one music download provider.

Just say yes to open microblogging!

Monday Light: The Old Meadow

The Old Meadow

I just came back from another trip to Hendy Woods. What an amazing place. This lovely meadow stole my heart away, and I only wish you could have been there on this beautiful spring day.

P. S. I shot this using my new Canon EOS 40D. Heh.

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Beginning to unveil the “super-secret” Web project

If you’ve been hanging around here a while, you may have got a few whiffs of a “super-secret” Web site I’ve been working on. I’m not quite ready to spill the beans, but I can give you a few hints.

For starters, I am a big believer in content aggregation. There are many well-established sites out there that host user content, and sometimes your own site is the best host. When it comes to blogging, video, podcasts, and so forth, it’s pretty hard to reinvent the wheel and make a splash these days. However, the pain point has shifted from how to host content to how to find quality content. Just go to YouTube.com sometime and you’ll see what I mean. Finding stuff that is meaningful to you and actually challenges your mind and your spirit is hard. Too hard.

So, with the idea of aggregation in mind, let’s move on to social networking. Social networking is awesome. We can quibble about how it might best be implemented, and some folks are hesitant to jump on board, but it’s definitely a concept that is in the process of reshaping the Internet. The problem I see is, again, that there’s a pain point where social networking and content aggregation aren’t always meshing very well. Facebook is a very different animal from Digg, and it’ll probably stay that way for some time.

Finally, I want to talk about Christianity. I hate to be blunt, but the Christian Web pretty much sucks. Sure, there are plenty of great church sites, and some ministries have done a lot of cutting edge stuff, and let’s not discount the growing swath of excellent Christian blogs — but by and large, there’s no great design or innovation going on that’s bringing all of the latest Web 2.0 and social networking inventions to bear and wrapping it all up in a package worthy of a TechCrunch nomination.

To summarize my post, I see a need for a service that solves this equation:

content aggregation + social networking + spiritual development - sucktitude = sweet

Interestingly enough, the first part of the name of this project starts with the answer to that equation. I leave it up to you to guess the rest of the name, as that revelation will have to wait a little while longer. In the meantime, I encourage you to leave your thoughts or any ideas you may have in regards how Christians can utilize Web 2.0 to the fullest extent. See you soon!

God is the Ultimate Travel Agent 4: Voices

“For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way, walk in it, when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, Be gone!”

Isaiah 30:19-22

God is the Ultimate Travel AgentThere is a lot of prophetic content in this passage and the text surrounding it, but I would like us to focus today on a promise that I believe is for all of God’s people at all times: if we strive to listen to the voice of the Lord and hear His decree in our spirits, He will be gracious and give us the knowledge and the strength we need to walk in His ways and in the destiny He has for our lives.

Last time in this series, I shared my testimony of God’s grace and mercy in my life and how God oriented me in the right direction to step forward into the journey He created for me. It is a process that is still ongoing, but the point I must emphasize above all others is that this process can only work to its fullest potential when two conditions are met: God speaks to you, and you are willing to humble yourself and receive what He shows you.

The first condition is of far less concern than the second, because the greatest revelation I’ve discovered in my short life is that God is speaking all the time! When we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and He sends the Father’s promise of the Holy Spirit to indwell in our bodies and souls, we gain access to a treasure trove of divine knowledge, insight, and wisdom — far above anything the world has to offer. If we are having trouble hearing from Him, perhaps we’re just not tuned into His spiritual frequency. Or, in many cases, we are receiving communication but we don’t know how to interpret it. In Luke 12:54-55, Jesus expressed it like this:

“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, A shower is coming. And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, There will be scorching heat, and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

The very manifestation of the Son of God had come working miracles, signs, and wonders and preaching the Good News to a lost generation, and yet many people completely missed the boat and were unable to discern what was happening all around them. And so it is even with us today: we see God working all around us, we see His handiwork in our very lives, and we miss it. Perhaps we’re too focused on our own needs, our own desires. Perhaps we have plans that we aren’t willing to submit to God’s authority. James says it best in chapter 4 starting at verse 13:

“Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

Let’s unpack this for a moment, because I think there is something very telling in James’ example. I am probably safe in saying that everybody has a very detailed idea of what they expect to do in life. Some people even have names, dates, and places all mapped out in their heads. Such dreaming is not without its usefulness, but the danger lies in expecting our imaginations to dictate reality. Only God has the power to do that. Jill Austin warns of living in a self-made fantasy world and missing out on the true destiny that God has which always starts wherever you are right now on your life’s journey.

James warns of such foolishness. We are only to move forward in God’s will. We can make plans, but only if the Lord wills it do we accomplish it with His favor and blessing. To do otherwise is arrogance and conceit and will only come to an evil end. I find the end of this passage of James’ very interesting: “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” That begs the question: how do we know what the right thing is to do? How do we know what God’s will is? How do we know we’re walking forward in His plan and His timing?

Again, if we take it as a given that God is always speaking, yet we can’t hear Him, then something is wrong on our end. Jesus says that His sheep hear His voice and follow Him. We are very precious to our God, and Jesus reminds us that He will leave the nighty-nine sheep safely penned up to go pursue the hundredth sheep who has strayed. So He is coming after us, hard. What should our response be?

There are three sources of information feeding into you at all times. The first is the devil and the evil kingdoms of the world. These voices are loud, persistent, and never let up. Every time you turn on the TV, read the paper, surf the Internet, or just chat with people not walking with God, you are inputting this sickly information stream. You can’t get rid of it, for God told us to go out into the world to be His hands and feet and to be the salt of the earth. But as soon as you forget these voices are to be kept at a safe distance, you are in trouble.

The second source of information is your own voice. I talk to myself all the time, and I know for a fact that I can logically rationalize almost any behavior I care to. I can easily fool myself into believing everything’s cool when it’s not. Conversely, I can fool myself into believing that God is mad at me and I’m a bad boy when in fact God loves me and thinks I rock. Really, my own voice can’t be trusted — unless I submit to the authority of the Holy Spirit.

Which brings me to the third source of information: the Holy Spirit! When we are born again and receive the Holy Spirit, we have a direct RSS feed from Heaven’s throne room, and we can send e-mail to god@heaven.eternity at any time we choose. And guess what? He actually answers! I have an inbox full of messages that have given me strength, solace, knowledge, and a heart of love that I never could have conjured up in my own power. I honestly don’t know how anyone can live the Christian life without apprehending this incredible connection we have with the Spirit of God that gives us everything we need in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus!

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:1-4

Children are utterly dependent on their parents for protection, nourishment, instruction, and loving guidance. Children know that when danger looms, the refuge of the open arms of their fathers and mothers is the place to be. And so it is with our Heavenly Father! We must not listen to the voices of others but only the Father’s Voice which speaks to us and equips us to set forth on the adventure of a lifetime. God gives us protection, God nourishes our bodies and refreshes our souls, God gives us lawful instruction and wise counsel. Only if we humble ourselves, like a little child, will we be exalted and live forever in glory in the Kingdom of Heaven. What an awesome promise!

In part 5 of this series, I will elaborate a bit on how we can “dial in” the right frequency to hear God’s voice and not any other. Blessings be upon you! See you then!

About the Author

JARED WHITE is a musician, a Web developer, a photographer, and a Charismatic Christian who believes that the Spirit of God is moving dramatically across the world today and impacting entire nations with the Gospel of the Kingdom. He writes frequently about living as a disciple of Jesus Christ in the 21st Century and isn't afraid to ask the hard questions — of himself more than anyone.

Regular topics include the intersection of culture and spirituality, miraculous signs and wonders, science and Intelligent Design, creative and prophetic arts, the future of the Church, and the occasional poke into that river of snakes commonly known as politics.

Jared lives in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, and calls Grace Fellowship his spiritual home.

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